The United Nations announced on Monday that it suspended all humanitarian operations in a large area controlled by the Houthis in northern Yemen in response to the arbitrary detention of its staff, who, according to him, has created hostile conditions for work help.
UN Secretary General António Guterres made the decision because the Houthis arrested eight other UN staff at the end of January, bringing the total arrested since 2021 to 24 years old, said Farhan Haq, a door -UN van.
Mr. Haq said the Houthis had violated an agreement concluded in December with the UN to stop holding the staff of the World Agency and finding a way to release those under their care. Less than a month later, the group arrested eight other workers in troubled spying and foreign intervention.
“This extraordinary and temporary measure seeks to balance the imperative to stay and deliver with the need to have the safety and safety of the UN staff and its guaranteed partners,” the UN said in a press release.
The UN also said that he had prevented all the staff from traveling in the Houthis controlled areas after detentions.
The Houthis, de facto leaders of the parts of Yemen, including the capital, Sana, are supported by Iran. They have embarked on a campaign of kidnappings and detention of hundreds of people who work for the UN and foreign non -government agencies, as well as dozens of current and former Yemenis employees by the United States governmentAccording to the UN
The UN did not specify the number of Yemenis affected by the suspension of its humanitarian aid operation, which, according to him, included the supply of food, drinking water and medical kits. But the UN identifies Yemen as having the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, 80% of its 24.1 million people needing essential help and three million displaced.
Saada, the area where the UN has suspended operations, is north of Sana and has around a million people. Several United Nations agencies operate in Saada, including the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, Unicef and other aid groups.
Mr. Haq, the United Nations spokesman, said that the decision to stop operations had not easily come and were strongly debated within the organization. “It is not a normal procedure or something we do frequently,” he said, adding that the decision reflected the severity of security problems for UN operations in Yemen.
The UN operates in war areas around the world, notably Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan and Ukraine, and its staff faces high risks and constraints, but it rarely closes its operations. In the war in Gaza, for example, the UN said that nearly 300 of its staff were killed in the War of Israel -Hamas in Gaza – the greatest number of UN employees killed in Any conflict – but the work continued.
HAQ said that UN staff have diplomatic immunity and should be protected. Hope was, he added, that a break in operations in Yemen would provide a space for negotiations with the Houthis to guarantee safe conditions for the UN to resume its work.
